Judging Freedom - Elon Musk & Twitter - What's Going On_

Episode Date: May 21, 2022

Twitter Moves to Limit Spread of Misinformation in Crises Social-media platform is adding criteria for tweets involving natural disasters and armed conflicts as Elon Musk pushes for less moderation #Musk #TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom, a special Saturday pop-up of Judging Freedom. Today is Saturday, May 21st, 2022. It's about 1130 in the morning here on a hot and steamy east coast

of the United States. I come to the camera this morning to talk to you about the latest involving Twitter. Now, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, offered to buy Twitter at $54 a share. This morning, it's trading at $38 a share. If he were to buy it today, he'd be probably overpaying for it. Since he signed the contract to buy it, the contract has a penalty clause in it, which requires him to pay a billion, with a B, dollars to Twitter if he doesn't actually acquire the shares of the company. But since he signed that contract, he's taken a step back and saying, I need more due diligence. Well, due diligence is the legal phrase applied to the opportunity for the purchaser to examine the books and records of the seller to see if

the entity being sold is truly worth what the seller claims it's worth. So stated differently, Musk had a team with the time to examine Twitter's books and records to decide if it was really worth $58 a share or $44 billion and he concluded that it was and so he made the offer. The offer was rejected. He made it again. It was accepted. They signed the contract off to the races. Meaning, wait for government approval. These days, you need the government approval for almost anything but wait for government approval and then have the closing where the money actually changes hands. Then Musk said, I need more time to decide how many of your billion accounts, billion accounts are bots or robots or fake accounts. Well, the time for him to make that determination has already passed,

but Twitter, which is now anxious to sell, is giving him more time. When he said this, caused the value of the Twitter shares to go down because a lot of people started selling their Twitter stock, thinking this is all a stunt by Elon Musk. He's worth $243 billion, the loss of $1 billion. Well, a lot of money is not a lot of money to him, and he may be willing to take that loss. That's at least the attitude, I think, of those who are selling their shares. Twitter is responding, and this is what's newsworthy. I'm sorry for the long introduction. Twitter is responding by saying, look, we know what Elon Musk is going to do. He's going to appoint people like Judge Napolitano to be the chief content officer. Libertarians who believe that you should be able to post anything

you want. We're not into posting anything we want. So Twitter is actually cracking down on what you can post. And they are cracking down on what they call misinformation about man-made disasters and natural disasters. We don't know where this is going to go. The last disaster we had was the mass murder at Topps Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where a crazed, truly deranged white supremacist slaughtered 10 people, one white and nine black. A crazy person who had been examined mentally at a mental institution and who had been posting for years horrific, trashy monologues and diatribes in support of the supremacy of the white race. Police should have known about him and they should have followed him. They certainly knew that he had a gun because you have to register your purchase of the gun. Anyway, that's the last disaster that we had. He put his cell phone on his gun.

He filmed and broadcast in real time the mass murder, and millions of people saw it. It since has been taken down, though not from everywhere. Twitter, it now appears, is going to crack down on all of this stuff. No word yet from Elon Musk. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.